It can be the smallest thing that grabs your attention and before you know it you’ve moved into a new realm of possibilities. Yesterday I upgraded ShadowPlan; the outlining software I use on my Palm Pilot. The installation came with a Tips & Tricks file. Thinking I would make better use of the software I opened it up. An hour later I was deep into a new world of ideas.
You see, the act of viewing that file created a bridge between my knowledge and a network of others. So far I’m investigating David Allen’s Getting Things Done, MegaWiki and Desktop Accessories. That latter is a field I had never come across before after having owned a Palm Pilot for nearly 4 years. Crossing the bridge will make my personal knowledge management much more efficient and powerful.
Like a bridge over a river, bridging networks of any type leads one to new possibilities. Think of bridges between IT networks (now seen as the World Wide Web), bridges between people and companies forging new ideas across the globe and bridges between ideas, the source of all invention.
I discovered a few weeks ago where I’m a bridge in my own network. I mapped out who I knew and their relationship to each other. It became obvious that many of the people I know don’t actually know the others exist. The best example was at a previous employer where I knew people pre-secondment to London, in London and post-secondment to London. Three distinct and separate groups of people whose only common link was me. Now that I recognise that I can put effort into linking both sides of the bridge. We will all benefit from that.